Quiet luxury: Life is nice these days on MTA's express buses

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Life is nice for New York City’s express bus riders.

The service, which is a lifeline for riders in hard-to-reach corners of the outer boroughs, has seen significant boosts in speed, ridership and service reliability since the launch of congestion pricing earlier this year.

The tolls from the program are required to finance $15 billion in upgrades to mass transit infrastructure, primarily the subways. It’ll take years for subway riders to feel those improvements. But the benefits are already present for express bus riders — so much so that the MTA this week announced a plan to boost service on some of the system’s routes in Southeast Queens.

“It’s a luxury and I enjoy it,” said Chequanna Kelley, an express bus rider who lives in Castle Hill in the Bronx and works in Chelsea. She recently started taking the BXM8, which has seen a 22% ridership increase since January — the largest jump of any line.

Kelley said her other option is the 6 train — which wouldn’t take any longer. Either way, she said, her commute is about an hour door-to-door. The difference is her coach bus lets her “sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.”

For those unfamiliar with New York City’s express buses, they’re not just faster versions of standard MTA buses. They’re 55-seat, diesel-burning coach buses with movie theater-style carpeting and airplane-style air conditioning vents that connect Manhattan to neighborhoods like Riverdale, Sheepshead Bay, Fresh Meadows and Tottenville.

The cost to ride is not the standard $2.90. It’s $7.

“I would pay $10, trust me,” said Jesus Mendez, who lives in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and takes the X28 to his job at Bellevue Hospital.

Mendez said he all but stopped taking the subway 20 years ago due to safety concerns, and stopped driving five years ago because it wasn’t worth the cost.

In anticipation of congestion pricing moving more commuters out of cars, the MTA added extra trips on eight express bus routes last year. Four of them serve Staten Island. This week’s announcement to add more service to Queens continues the trend.

“The express bus is, in some ways, Staten Island’s version of the Acela with less Wi-Fi,” said Frank Morano, a lifelong Staten Islander and newly elected city councilmember.

“It’s a quiet little community,” said Morano, a Republican. “You recognize the same people — the woman who gets off at Rector Street, the guy who eats a hard-boiled egg at 7 a.m. It’s part of the experience of being a Staten Islander, to run into someone on the express bus who you haven’t seen since high school.”

The current express bus network, which comprises 75 routes in total, includes dozens of routes that were incorporated into the MTA in 2005 and 2006 and were previously operated by seven private companies.

If $7 still sounds like a steep fee for a one-way ride on an MTA bus, it could be more. For every fare a rider pays, New York City Transit kicks in an extra $25.93 in subsidies, according to 2023 data analyzed by the Citizens Budget Commission. By comparison, subway subsidies amount to $1.66 per ride.

But express bus funding — which kept near-empty buses running consistently through the pandemic — is unlikely to go away.

Morano said he used to drive to work when he worked late shifts, and ran on opposing congestion pricing. But he doesn’t think lawmakers should be eyeing mass transit subsidies for potential cuts.

“The bus might take a while, but at least I’m not white-knuckling it over the Verrazzano Bridge every morning,” he said. “And it gives [me] the opportunity to get some other things done. I use it as an opportunity to sleep.”

NYC transportation news this week

L train signal upgrades, already. New MTA documents show that the once cutting-edge CBTC signal system on the L line will need to be replaced in 2028, almost 25 years after it was installed.

“You’re probably not still using a laptop from 25 years ago. And so the computerized systems, especially, that were set up for CBTC on our first line are reaching the end of their useful life and need to be replaced.” — Sean Fitzpatrick, chief of staff at MTA construction department

MTA officials have championed modern signals as a silver bullet to improve subway service — but the agency’s current timeline would install the technology on less than half the system over the next decade.

Crackdown on cyclists. Since the NYPD in April announced ramped-up enforcement for cyclists and e-bikers running red lights and riding the wrong way down streets, criminal summonses for cyclists have jumped tenfold compared to the same period last year.

Eyes on subway surfers. City officials said drones have helped police make 200 rescues — mostly of teenagers — from subway surfing incidents since November 2023.

Chinatown crash. A judge has ordered the driver who fatally struck two people in Chinatown on Saturday held in jail on murder and other charges. The driver was also charged roughly three months ago in a Brooklyn crash that seriously injured a pedestrian.

A safer Sunset Park? Residents and elected officials are once again calling for safety improvements on Third Avenue under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, where a hit-and-run driver killed two men earlier this month.

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Question from Theo in Manhattan

What is going on with the new guardrails that have been installed along the Seventh Avenue line (Christopher and Sheridan, 14th, and 18th on the downtown side). Are they part of a pilot program or is the MTA planning on rolling out more in the future?

Answer

The MTA refers to those guardrails as “platform edge barriers.” They were first installed in stations last year in response to subway safety concerns, including a high-profile incident at Times Square in 2022 where Michelle Go was fatally shoved onto the subway tracks. Currently, the MTA has installed the barriers at 58 stations. The agency plans to install them at more than 100 stations by the end of the year.

MTA surveys find the majority of customers want these barriers in subway stations, even though they only partially block the tracks. The MTA previously studied the possibility of installing full platform screens and found the work would cost $7 billion. Because the stations are so old, the screens could only be installed at 128 of the MTA’s 472 stations